Chapter 108: Life 62, Age 79, Martial Disciple Peak
A soldier took me to a small cultivation room on the edge of the palace complex.
“Swallow this,” he ordered once I was seated in the room.
He handed me a pill that I didn’t recognize. I held it in my hands, examining it for a couple of seconds, but the soldier’s demeanor suggested that he wanted me to take it without delay. I didn’t know the exact effects of the pill, but I could tell that it was some type of poison. I didn’t seem to have any choice, and I didn’t think he wanted to kill me, so I put it in my mouth and swallowed.
Pain lanced through me, and all of the qi in my body trembled. He had indeed given me a poison pill, but it was not a poison for the physical body. It was one that acted on the energy in my body.
My cultivation base began to fall into a weakened state, and it felt like it might collapse entirely. I was a Martial Disciple, and what he had given me was at least a rank 2 poison. I had almost no resistance to a pill of this power.
“Swallow this,” he said, handing me another pill.
This time I easily recognized it as a Rank 3 Qi Gathering Pill. To me, giving such a pill to a Disciple was one of the worst ideas I could think of, but the soldier just looked at me emotionlessly. He wasn’t willing to take ‘no’ for an answer.
I swallowed the pill.
“Give me access to your qi,” he commanded.